Forum - View topicJason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - A Quick and Dirty History of Manga in the US
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
katscradle
Posts: 469 |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
Interesting article. Really crystallizes the different personalities behind manga in the U.S.
Libraries are how I found manga. I picked up one of Rumiko Takahashi's tiles from VIZ in the 90s. Either one of the Mermaid books or Rumic Theater. And such began the odyssey of trying to have a comic shop know what you were talking about. But thank you VIZ! Also why I started importing later.
Thanks for reminding me about Tagame. I just pre-ordered it. His work is never ever something I thought would make it over here because I doubt whether people would understand what is behind it too. |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Hardgear
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
For what it's worth, there were more than a few titles on JManga that I wanted to buy, but I didn't simply because I couldn't actually DOWNLOAD them and I knew if the service ever shut down, all the manga that I spent my money on would be gone. And what do you know, I was right! Come on, even the flippin music industry understands this and lets you buy DRM-free MP3's, and if even they can get it, I'm sure manga publishers must be capable of it as well.
Basically, I am willing to pay for a product (even a digital product), but NOT for a "service", with one exception: subscription sites that give you access to everything. I subscribe to Crunchyroll (and Funimation for about 2 months until their God-awful streaming service proved repeatedly it is not worth it) because one monthly fee gets me unlimited access to all of their stuff. That is way different than me paying $ to only have access to one specific episode, only to have it taken down once the license expires or Crunchyroll shuts down. If anyone wants to launch a manga version of Crunchyroll where you pay a monthly fee to have access to their entire library, I'd be down for that. |
||||||||||||||||
Prede
 Posts: 388 |
|
|||||||||||||||
That should actually say "early 1990's". CPM, ADV, Manga Ent, Streamline, and AnimEigo were big in the early to mid 90's. Also you talk about the late 90's in another spot. |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
Snomaster1
 SubscriberPosts: 2796 |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
My compliments to Mr. Thompson for his concise history of manga in America. It was pretty good. I liked it. It may be a niche business these days but the American anime and manga industry can rebound...hopefully.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
|
|||||||||||||||
Yes, that was a typo, sorry! Actually, Fred Patten emailed me and gave me a whole list of comments & corrections: 1961: Magic Boy, Panda and the Magic Serpent, and Alakazam the Great all came out in America in 1960, not 1961. 1963: The Japanese TV animation shown in America in 1963 were Astro Boy, 8th Man, and Gigantor. Kimba wasn't until 1966. 1973: Richard Kyle founded Graphic Story Bookshop in 1972, not 1973. It changed its name to Wonderworld Books in 1973. 1975: Mark Merlino showed his videotaped episodes of subtitled giant robot TV cartoons at meetings of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society during 1976, before Mark and Fred started the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization, the first club for anime, in May 1977. Also, the C/FO met in Los Angeles, not San Francisco. 1980: the Japanese manga artists who accompanied Tezuka and Monkey Punch to the 1980 San Diego Comic-Con included Go Nagai, Yumiko Igarashi (hardly "more obscure mangaka") and Shinobu Kaze. 1984: Anime and manga were also showcased at the 1984 World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles. The convention brought Yoshiyuki Tomino (Mobile Suit Gundam) from Japan as a special guest. 1985: Harmony Gold's production of Robotech (mentioned in the article) appeared on American TV. An American comic-book adaptation by Comico started in 1985. 1990s: The first wave of American anime specialty video companies all started between 1988 and 1991. Streamline Pictures, founded in 1988, started out distributing 35 m.m. films (Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Twilight of the Cockroaches, Akira) theatrically in 1989 and 1990 before it released its first video tapes in 1991. |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Pleinair92
Posts: 50 |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
I wonder if I should mention that Captain America does almost always carry his shield in his left hand and Fury's eye-patch has always been over his left eye.
Like most fans, my first response was petty nitpicking. Joy. Well, blame Tokyopop for such an incredibly minor thing. |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
|
|||||||||||||||
Manga rights, not anime rights. No relation! (But of course you're joking, since Viz didn't even exist till '87 -_- ) |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
doc-watson42
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1708 |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
A few (more) corrections:
(Emphasis added.) According to Robert Woodhead, who claims to have invented fansubs with Roe Adams, the first fansubs were created in 1988.
You're leaving out the abortive Spider-Man Manga and X-men Manga translations, the former of which you actually reviewed in this very column.
It seems that the entire interview was likely never available online, at least not without a subscription to The Comics Journal. The Wayback Machine has the excerpt here: "2004 - A good year to get out of the manga business?", The Comics Journal #259, April 2004. Regarding Manga's publication date, etc.: Fred Patten includes it in his "Fifteen Years of Japanese Animation Fandom, 1977–92" (which I want to recommend; included in his Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 Years of Essays and Reviews, p. 30—the July 1982 entry), though is not diffinitive. |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Carl Horn
Posts: 90 |
|
|||||||||||||||
There was certainly fansubbing going on in the San Francisco Bay Area as early as 1986. In 1984, though, I think the only the subtitled anime in circulation would have been (unauthorized) videotape copies of those few anime films that had official subtitled 16 or 35mm film prints for foreign screenings, or of TV shows that had aired in Japanese-American markets such as that served by KIKU in Honolulu. Even these, however, made up a very small part of the tapes American fans were watching--then as now, people wanted to watch what was new and cool, and most of the time it was normal not to expect a translation. It's not like that was an ideal state of affairs, but it would be interesting to know how many fans in 2013 would still be into anime if they suddenly had to watch it without a line-by-line translation, which was the norm for fans throughout the 1970s and 80s. But at that time there also wasn't so much instant awareness of news among fans (some were already online, but it was generally with local BBS networks), so it's not unreasonable to think the idea also sprang up independently in other parts of the country. At any rate, the admirable thing about AnimEigo was not whether they invented it first, but that they decided to use their combination of technical skills and fan sensibilities to build a legitimate anime business that would benefit both the Japanese and the American sides of the scene. |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Mohawk52
Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
|
|||||||||||||||
Ulp!! Yes, you're right! I guess I was thinking "non-Marvel-based manga".... but then again, they translated Katsuhiro Otomo's "Memories" too, so I'm also wrong about that. -_-;; Quick and dirty it is!! Basically, though, despite Akira selling fairly well (I believe), Marvel never translated any other major original properties. |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
katscradle
Posts: 469 |
|
|||||||||||||||
This is why I feel very old school sometimes. I was born in the 80s but, one of the local stores had Japanese tapes when I was a teenager. So after I figured out what this Japanese stuff was I ended up getting untranslated videos along with what English releases there were by that time (I was lucky enough to have taken Japanese in middle school.) I never got on the fansub or scanlation bandwagon. Whereas, I think a lot of fans from my generation came to Anime and manga through high profile domestic releases and the internet. |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
StudioToledo
 Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
|
|||||||||||||||
That's nothing, I remember back in '95 or '96 and finding a copy of "The Complete Anime Guide" in the scant section of graphic novels my Ma & Pa shop I dearly loved have had on the shelf, changed me ever since!
We've heard it before.
Though when you mean "public channels", you really mean PBS in this case (as we tend to refer to non-cable channels as "Broadcast/Terrestrial Television" otherwise, a form of television that has been around since the beginning of the medium and it's free, at least in countries that don't charge a license fee like the US), but I see what you mean there (of course if it had been easier, more anime would've ended up on cable and public television far sooner had the window of opportunity been opened far greater before the mainstream crowd showed up).
Some drone at Tokuma Shoten I bet (also why New World ended up with "Angel's Egg too)!
People in those communities served by a large Asian audience often got in easy thanks to the shows that were either broadcast over UHF or via cable in those days. Those were fun times indeed. Los Angeles had KWHY TV22 playing this stuff I think.
It would weed things out a little surely! By the way Mr. Horn, you might dig this article!
For me, simply hearing of a local comic book shop that had an ad that proclaimed "JAPANESE ANIMATION" in bold lettering superimposed over a shot of planet earth was enough to peak my interest in this unknown dimension I wasn't aware of before. |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
jgreen
 Posts: 1325 Location: St. Louis, MO |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
Great overview! I appreciate you working some history of American manga, Amerimanga, OEL manga, or whatever you want to call it in there as well. I'm surprised you didn't mention the creation of American comics based on manga and anime (such as DC's horrible "Robotech: Defenders" comics, or Adam Warren's Dirty Pair and Bubblegum Crisis books). Also, since there are a few shoutouts to "Ninja High School," I feel obligated to give one to Fred Perry, whose series "Gold Digger" is by far the longest-running OEL manga and still going strong.
Another small correction I didn't see mentioned...
Manga Vizion was shorter than 128 pages. In the early days when it had 4 features it was 96 pages, and later when it only had 3 features it was frequently only 80 pages. Great magazine, though. I especially loved the letter column, which featured a lot of entries from someone who may or may not be the author this post. 
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group